It was a dark and stormy night…..This is the classic opening for one of the most influential books of my childhood A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'engle. It represents the beginning of my passion for the written word and science fiction literature. It seems fitting that I kick off my book blog with the book that kicked off my love of books.
The story revolves around a girl named Meg, her little brother, Charles Wallace, and a boy Meg likes, Calvin O'Keefe, traveling to another planet to save the siblings imprisoned father. The three are escorted on their journey by three aliens, or ‘angelic beings’ as they are referred to in the book, disguised as eccentric old women.
L’engle always said she did not believe in talking down to children. She believed that they are capable of comprehending complex concepts. One of these complex concepts in the book is idea of “tesseracting.” This is the primary method of travel used by the main characters to move from one planet to another. This method involves bending space so that great distances can be covered in a few seconds. This is one of the first real sci-fi concepts I remember as having impacted me for one reason. At one point I described the book to a teacher (not one of my mine) who thought the concept of bending space was utter nonsense. She couldn’t understand the concept of bending space because she thought it was impossible. I did understand it. At the time this blew my mind. “I understand something Teacher doesn’t, how is that possible?” was my thought at the time.